From field to table: This family-run farm stay is showing guests the best of the Bahamas

Ben’s problem was that there is no land left in Harbour Island that doesn’t cost tens of millions. But Eleuthera, a few minutes away across the bay, has an old property law that allows Eleutherians whose blood runs back centuries to clear ground and use it. While Pip is Canadian, Ben’s father’s family goes way back. So he chose a piece of the bayside near where pirates used to collect water. He cleared a Casuarina forest, planted coconuts and built 12 canvas-and-wood rooms. Now, in season, barely a weekend passes without a magnificent, often starry, wedding. But he and Charlie wanted to bring it all yet closer to the land.

Ben learned his hospitality at his mother’s apron strings, and it bears little resemblance to what’s taught in the hotel schools of Lausanne. Pip used to do almost all the cooking at The Ocean View Club, often using recipes from guests. The pasta dishes come from photographer Fabrizio Ferri. “She believes the guest is a coproducer of the experience,” says Ben. She is an inveterate gardener too, which also rubbed off. Ben returned from college, cooked in the hotel and built a farm on a friend’s property. “I didn’t make much,” he says. “But I enjoyed it.”

Homemade hummusAna Lui Photography

When, four years ago, a guest with agricultural know-how decided to stay a few more weeks, Ben and he headed into the bush and began laying out raised beds where the soil was rich. Ben wanted to make his restaurant menus completely field-to-fork, but The Farm, just five minutes’ walk from the water, would also become an idyll in the forest, as peaceful a place as it’s possible to imagine.

Rooms overlooking the farmAna Lui Photography